73 - Back! And On A Mission!

First off, apologies to my mates in the Tale of Even More Painters challenge. Unfortunately, I was unable to participate in the last 4 challenges because of real life (holidays, work, graduate school applications, etc.). Overall, though, it was great fun and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. It really did improve my painting/ modeling/ conversion skills and, in fact, in the time I've been away from the blog, I've actually assembled and converted an enormous amount of unpainted miniatures in my (not very much) spare time.

Which brings me to why I've decided to resume updating this blog. I'm not exaggerating when I say I've assembled quite a horde of unpainted miniatures over the last 3-4 months. They sit on my shelves, their gray and white metal exteriors silently accusing me for being such a lazy bastard. Well, after watching "Julie and Julia" with the wife, I resolved to embark on a journey of my own. For the next 365 days, I shall paint one miniature a day! Here are the ground rules:

1) I am allowing myself to prep models ahead of time (i.e., clean, assemble, even prime). In other words, I don't have to start fresh with a model still on the sprue every day. So long as at the end of the day, I have a completely painted, shaded/ highlighted, and based miniature, I will consider that day successful.

2) If I happen to miss a day or two, I will force myself to make up the missed miniatures over a weekend or a day-off from work. Bottom line - I need to have 7 finished miniatures at the end of the week or else I will consider the experiment a failure.

3) Ultimately, real life can take many strange and unforeseen twists and turns. There may come a time when I might have to put this project on hold. (I can already anticipate a week to 10 day cross-country trip to the West Coast sometime in May-June which would certainly interrupt my painting.) If something truly out of my control (i.e., anything other than sheer laziness on my part) forces me to stop painting for a bit, then I will try my best to make up the loss in painted miniatures. At the end of 365 days, if I can count 365 painted miniatures then I will consider this project a success regardless of whether I painted one a day or 7 a week.

4) At some point in this experiment, I might have to convert my one miniature a day into x number of painting points a week. For now, though, I'll try to stick to my one miniature a day project for as long as possible. If I have to resort to painting points, then I'll set the number of points at something equatable - like 7 painting points a week with no carry-over points (i.e., even if I painted a vehicle or 2 monstrous creatures in a given week, I won't carry the 3 left-over points into the next week).

5) For the first few weeks or so, I'm tempted to finish up some partially painted miniatures I have laying around just to get warmed up. I have about 4 Blood Ravens and 6 or so Orks sitting unfinished at my painting station that really need to get finished. We'll see. I'll definitely fully disclose in my daily posts whether or not the miniature I finished was already partially painted or not however.

Well, that's that. I'm glad to be back blogging and painting. I'll have to start visiting the various blogs I enjoyed out there as well. See you all tomorrow with painted miniature #1!

Note: the image for this post was used without Games Workshop's permission. If Games Workshop objects to my using the image, please contact me and I will take it down.